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Silicon Valley’s Easiest Money

As Uber looks for investors to buy more preferred stock valued at $50 billion, it has been turning to the usual late-stage funds. But it also enlisted one of its earliest investors, Shervin Pishevar, to shop a side fund, or special purpose vehicle, to bring individual investors into the round, three people have told me.

SPVs have become increasingly common. They allow seed-fund investors with small funds to invest bigger sums in individual, later-stage companies. Recent high-profile ones include Instacart and Pinterest, whose latest round included a $200 million SPV. Typically they’re smaller. (I am told this Uber one has been aiming to raise in the mid-tens of millions of dollars.)